


you should probably not remember this

by sundialling



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV)
Genre: Author will continue regretting everything, F/F, Gen, OST: Unwoman -- Goody Two Shoes, Post-Canon, Rating will change, Updates will be irregular, Very Fed-up Detectives, abdication, enemies to reluctant co-conspirators with benefits, implausibly averted canonical character death, noir shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24923056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundialling/pseuds/sundialling
Summary: Some years after the Hotel Denouement fire, Jacquelyn Scieszka -- private detective, erstwhile Duchess of Winnipeg, once and future volunteer -- has big dreams, a small clientele, and three weeks to pay the back rent on her office before facing some hard decisions about her career trajectory. Dr. Georgina Orwell -- unethical optometrist, hypnosis enthusiast, alleged corpse -- has an unsolvable offer, a problem too good to be true, and a safe-deposit box she can't access without forfeiting her legally dead status. Who's planning to double-cross whom first? What other secrets are hiding in the wreckage of Paltryville? What does Gustav Sebold's unfilmed masterpiece have to do with anything? And whereisthe evening taking them, anyway?
Relationships: Georgina Orwell/Jacquelyn Scieszka
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	1. ...SHE WALKS INTO MINE.

The phrase "a blast from the past" does not typically refer to an unexpected explosion caused by something long ago concealed and half-forgotten. It is most frequently used as a figure of speech, often by people hoping that an ironic deployment of weary clichés will successfully disguise their own weary inability to identify coolness even if it were to be presented to them on a silver platter complete with insulating gloves and an attractive garnish of dry ice. Jacquelyn Scieszka -- private detective, erstwhile Duchess of Winnipeg, once and future volunteer -- had never been one of those people. 

However, on the night before the vernal equinox, while she sat up late in her office with a foil tray of aloo saag and a hopeless desire to resolve the problem of maintaining an independent career on an average monthly income that so far was hardly sufficient to cover her cat food, microfilm, and one-hour dry cleaning expenses, Jacquelyn gradually became aware of a distinctively syncopated step echoing down the otherwise deserted corridor that led towards Scieszka Investigations (Office #12A, Floor 12A, 41 Dashiell Drive, Absolutely NO Deliveries Outside Normal Business Hours). It was a step such as might identify a smallish adult wearing elegant yet practical boots and employing a silver-tipped cane to offset the inconvenience of a knee whose owner found it less reliable now than it had been even a few years previously; and as she silently pressed the button that caused her top desk drawer to slide open with its false bottom unlatched, thus allowing her to palm the throwing knives of her choice, Jacquelyn was nevertheless reminded of the phrase "a blast from the past." 

After all, her career history had involved more than the usual number of unexpected explosions caused by something long ago concealed and half-forgotten. There had been the cache of gunpowder buried in a national park by the legendary pirate Saskatoon Bob shortly before he went into witness protection; there had been the pocket of methane gas encountered during the excavation of a nineteenth-century Parisian sewer archive; there had been the tragic celluloid film stock incident; and most unexpected of all, there was her office door swinging open to reveal an attractive and well-dressed middle-aged woman long assumed to have lost her life in a fatal accident involving the reckless combination of factory equipment, unethical hypnosis, and the emotional difficulties of embarking on co-villainy with an ex. 

"Dr. Orwell," said Jacquelyn. 

"Ms. Scieszka," said Dr. Georgina Orwell. 

"I see you're a redhead now," said Jacquelyn, calm as is only possible for someone with a well-balanced Damascus steel blade concealed in each sleeve of her jacket. "As opposed to a charred and leathery corpse or a small pile of ashes. It's a much more objectively flattering look, but this is still an unwelcome surprise." 

"Really, Ms. Scieszka," said Dr. Orwell, making her way to the secondhand upright chair positioned on the client's side of Jacquelyn's desk. "A VFD schismatic with all the finely honed reflexes and deceptive upper body strength necessary to safely throw a live baby through the air -- no mean feat if I do say so myself -- simply _happens_ to do so whilst stumbling backwards into a fiery furnace upon being startled by a horde of confused, malnourished factory workers bent on revenge just as soon as they can grasp the concept of the door? Leaving behind a cracked pair of glasses and a corpse charred so unrecognizably as to be identifiable only by the shoes? And you were satisfied with _that_ as conclusive evidence of my death? That one, my dear, is entirely on you."

"All right, when you put it that way, I do see your point," Jacquelyn said ruefully, a word which here means "socially embarrassed due to having been taken in by circumstantial evidence, however convincing." 

"Whereas in fact, far from losing my life, I didn't even lose my glasses." Dr. Orwell smiled a contented smile. "I kept a pre-damaged decoy pair in a heatproof pouch taped to the wall midway up the Vertical Flame Diversion. An intelligent woman never goes on the lam with uncorrected vision. Is that Peshwari naan I spy there?" 

"I'm saving that for breakfast tomorrow," Jacquelyn snapped, as irate as though the unwanted visitor had expressed designs on her life or her livelihood, rather than on a dish of flatbread stuffed with dried fruit and coconut. "You know, Charles Peake-Squalor provided us with the blueprints for the Lucky Smells Lumbermill for archival purposes before the building was condemned. VFD never owned it, so there should never have _been_ a Vertical Flame Diversion installed on the premises."

Dr. Orwell sighed, tapping her fingers impatiently against the head of her cane. "Not on the official blueprints, perhaps, but do try to keep up. The facility was upgraded shortly after I opened my practice and shortly before I made the contractors who upgraded it eat the _real_ blueprints in a chopped salad with Thousand Island dressing. Don't make that face at me, it's hardly worth giving yourself wrinkles. That ink wasn't even toxic."

"And where the hell did the decoy corpse come from?" As a volunteer and a private detective, Jacquelyn was well aware that it can be far too easy for an unscrupulous person to obtain the body of an unidentified middle-aged woman, particularly if that unscrupulous person is a medical professional, a hypnotist, or the brother-in-law of a hospital custodian. The body formerly identified as Dr. Orwell had undoubtedly long since decomposed, but Jacquelyn would have welcomed any evidence leading to the proper identification of its original occupant, or the method by which Dr. Orwell had substituted it for her own very much living body. Unfortunately, no such information was to be forthcoming. 

"You can't expect me to share _all_ my secrets," Dr. Orwell said blandly, a word which here means "in the most infuriatingly even-tempered way possible." "Particularly not with an ex-duchess who doesn't even like to share her carry-out. I read about the abdication in September's Channel Islands _Vogue_ , by the way. Congratulations on the new business venture."

Jacquelyn seethed. Having inherited the Duchy of Winnipeg from her late aunt, she had realized within months that she was not especially well-suited to a position of ceremonial governance focused primarily on large-picture diplomatic and infrastructural concerns, a phrase which here means "a job where hiding in ventilation ducts and punching miscreants were rarely, if ever, on the agenda." Ferdinanda, her second cousin once removed, had been both perfectly suited and perfectly happy to accept the role in her place; and Jacquelyn, duchyless and subsequently somewhat disillusioned by aspects of VFD's organizational history, had decided to strike out on her own for the time being. She was not, she had to admit, finding it particularly easy going, from either a financial or a motivational perspective. 

"Thank you," she said, allowing herself to be aware once more of the concealed and deadly weapons poised to settle into her grasp. "Did you emerge from hiding after all this time because it's so hard to find Happy Abdication cards anymore, or is this the part where the supervillain can't move forward without cryptically taunting the forces of good into pursuing her?" 

"Neither," Dr. Orwell replied calmly. "I want to hire you. Why don't you either draw whatever it is you're hiding up those sleeves of yours, or put it down quietly and hear out an opportunity to earn an unreasonable amount of money?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the Channel Islands (a very small archipelago in the English Channel) did have their own edition of _Vogue_ , it would almost certainly contain many articles about aqueous martinis and the Duchy of Winnipeg. 
> 
> [The thing that looks like an Arrogant Worms reference is an Arrogant Worms reference.](https://youtu.be/IehQRVylI0U)


	2. I'M GONNA MAKE HER AN OFFER SHE CAN'T REFUSE.

Dr. Georgina Orwell (MD, PhD, BC [revoked with extreme prejudice], ex-VFD), considered herself to be a keen observer of human nature, a phrase which ordinarily means "someone who likes to form long-winded theories about why other people behave the way they do," and which in Dr. Orwell's case meant both that and "someone with a strong recreational interest in watching other people, regardless of whether or not those people are aware of being watched." 

While it is almost impossible -- at least without hypnotic preparation or a reliable pair of night-vision goggles -- to sit directly across a desk from someone without making them aware that they are being watched, Dr. Orwell nevertheless took a strong recreational interest in watching Jacquelyn Scieszka's response to her suggestion of gainful employment. A former mutual acquaintance had once described Jacquelyn as having an ideal face for silent film, a phrase which in that case had meant "a face both very attractive and highly expressive of emotion, even without the advantages of spoken dialogue." As Dr. Orwell's words sunk in, Jacquelyn's face expressed a great deal of emotion. Her long-lashed eyes widened, suggesting incredulity; her well-sculpted nostrils flared, implying anger; the corners of her shapely mouth tightened, strongly hinting that she was considering the advantages of some very sharply spoken dialogue indeed.

Eventually, she reluctantly produced an elegant steel throwing knife from her left sleeve and set it down on her desk blotter, still well within her easy reach. From her right sleeve, she produced an identical knife; this one, however, she did not put down quietly. Without averting her stare from Dr. Orwell's face, she threw this second knife across the office at high speed, sending it whistling past Dr. Orwell's ear to embed itself, vibrating, in the doorframe.

"Split the difference," she said coolly, a phrase which here means "well aware that she was being melodramatic, but considering it justifiable under the circumstances."

"Nice form," said Dr. Orwell, who was all but tempted to agree with her. "Should I take that as a yes?" 

"You should take it as a collegial suggestion to stay dead next time while you have the chance," Jacquelyn said, before clearing her throat sharply. "But if you want to divulge some evil scheme now that you're already here, I'd happily pass the details along to someone who cares enough about you to verify and thwart it as applicable."

Dr. Orwell considered her options. Despite the smeary inadequacy of the bulb in Jacquelyn's desk lamp, there was more than enough off-putting yellow light to play over the intricate engraving on the head of her cane and thus provide a serviceable _ad hoc_ visual focus, a term which here means "a shiny object." The temptation to immediately hypnotize Jacquelyn into some manners was almost impossible to resist; but while Dr. Orwell was unlikely to admit any true disadvantages of her methodology, she had to acknowledge that a hypnotic subject's near-total absence of independent thought could be something of a double-edged sword. Independent thought, after all, was often an indispensable quality in private detectives. 

"I'd hardly call it an _evil_ scheme," she said at last. "In fact, it's hardly a scheme at all. I simply need someone familiar with VFD protocols to assist me in reclaiming something that's already mine."

"Your shot at world domination?" Jacquelyn suggested. The off-putting yellow light carved heavy shadows into her high cheekbones, creating an aura of dramatic intensity and -- in Dr. Orwell, at any rate -- an impulse to recommend the purchase of a more powerful bulb, and perhaps some form of green-tinted visor to guard against the menace of eyestrain, if Jacquelyn planned to spend many more dreary nights poring over her bank statements. 

"Not in the slightest," she said, setting the thought aside. "You recall my mentioning to you just now that the only accurate blueprints of Lucky Smells Lumbermill were eaten immediately following construction?" 

"I'm unlikely ever to forget that." Jacquelyn's upper lip curled, in a way suggestive of either true moral outrage or a fundamental discomfort with mayonnaise-based salads; Dr. Orwell made a mental note to explore that question later, should the opportunity present itself. 

"Well. I may have overstated that case very slightly." 

While Dr. Orwell possessed a wide and diverse range of theories about other people's behavior, perhaps foremost among those was the theory that she herself had a remarkable natural gift for recognizing the moments at which another person's interested attention was all hers for the taking, despite any better judgment that person might possess. This is not an uncommon theory among hypnotists, politicians, and professional riverboat gamblers, but Dr. Orwell's recognizations tended to be accurate far more often than not. She frequently felt a profound degree of kinship with the orb weaver spider, a canny and industrious creature which obtains its meals by spinning its remarkable natural gift of silk into elaborate webs, the better to trap any luckless fly blundering close enough to cause the slightest tremor in a single outlying thread. 

"There may be one remaining complete set," she continued, recognizing a very slight silken tremor indeed in the bright pinprick of curiosity that illuminated Jacquelyn's eyes. "That set could well be squirreled away in a safe-deposit box which I'm presently unable to access without facing a lot of inconvenient questions about the whole fiery death, mass hypnosis, wanted in five states schemozzle. It's furthermore possible that those blueprints might be absolutely necessary for anyone hoping to retrieve certain personal items from the condemned lumbermill building, and I do very much want to retrieve my personal items. Obviously I'd have no further use for the blueprints afterwards. Please feel free to jump in the moment you start picking up what I'm laying down."

"You want to hire _me_ to help you rob a _bank_?" Pleasingly -- although not surprisingly, to anyone aware of her tenure as secretary to the uniquely unworthwhile banker known as Mr. Poe -- Jacquelyn's tone conveyed notably little in the way of renewed moral outrage as such, although its place had clearly been taken by a great deal of incredulity and a suggestion of professional offense. "Whatever happened to henchpeople? Did you end up on some kind of list again?" 

"Not at all," Dr. Orwell said sharply, and almost entirely truthfully. "And I do not _rob banks_. I've never robbed a bank in my life. I simply want you to investigate the Lake Lachrymose branch of Sinclair Lewis Savings and Loan, find out which staff members would be able to discreetly access Box 49, and determine what kind of dead-drop protocol would best allow one of those people to liberate the contents without arousing any suspicions. Does that sound like henchperson work to you?"

"To me, that's exactly what that sounds like."

"Suit yourself." Dr. Orwell shrugged, resisting once again the siren call of on-the-spot hypnosis; it occurred to her, in a distant and faintly unpleasant way, that she had let fall by the wayside much of the talent she had once had for relating civilly to intelligent, well-read people with all their critical thinking skills intact. "However, with that information at hand, I should be able to target a suitable candidate who can retrieve my property with zero fuss whatsoever and a very minimal risk of long-term cognitive aftereffects. It's really quite harmless compared to the possible alternatives, isn't it?"

While Dr. Orwell considered this point, at least, to be inarguable, Jacquelyn either sincerely disagreed or refused to yield the slightest rhetorical ground. "Hypnotizing people without their consent is still morally wrong even if your actual objectives are more or less neutral. Which, by the way, I still don't believe for a second."

"Oh, I'd be quite happy for you to name your fee if you can find me a consenting bank clerk," Dr. Orwell said, enjoying the harsh, angry way Jacquelyn sucked in her breath at this deliberate and distinctly salacious misunderstanding. "That would make everything so much easier. It's a smaller bank, so I won't pretend your odds of success there are incredible, but there's always a possibility. Keep an eye out for lonely men in their mid-thirties and young women who drop things." 

A muscle twitched distinctly in Jacquelyn's right eyelid. "You really are among the ten worst people I've ever met, Georgina. I _told_ them all, after we finished deprogramming Gustav, sooner or later someone was going to have to --" 

Even in the absence of a properly formulated hypnotic suggestion, there are many situations in which a few provocatively phrased words can lead to a strong and involuntary response, whether that be a smoldering mixture of resentment, wounded pride, and frustration; a highly explosive compound of white-hot outrage and conflicted institutional regret; or a consuming and unquenchable urge to destroy the life of the nearest individual who shares 99% of your opinions and values. Dr. Orwell had never found these reactions quite as delightful, structurally satisfying, or easily controllable as the deliberate practice of her art; but she would have been the first to acknowledge her own frequent involvement in the starting of fires. 

"Someone was going to have to what? Wipe me out with a deadly fungus, possibly?" To Dr. Orwell's immense satisfaction, her words had an immediate effect, a phrase which here means "caused Jacquelyn to go slightly pale around the lips and visibly restrain herself from reaching for the remaining throwing knife." Even when forced to acknowledge that she herself was perilously close to losing her temper, Dr. Orwell enjoyed focusing on her success in causing lost temper in others. "Hide in the bushes next time Olaf pushed me off a bridge, so you could leap out and read _Finnegans Wake_ at me through a megaphone until I held _myself_ underwater just to get it over with?" 

"That was _Absalom, Absalom!_ , and that was _one time_."

"A distinction without a difference." Taking advantage of Jacquelyn's momentary state of intense emotional turmoil, Dr. Orwell helped herself to a bite of lukewarm vegetable pakora from the nearest container, and forced herself to sit back comfortably in her chair. "Here's what I think. I think you're a woman who likes to dive into the fray, hence the abdication. Yes?"

Jacquelyn's mouth twisted, sharply enough to imply that she was either searching for hidden deadfalls in the question or sucking an oddly-flavored throat lozenge against the backs of her teeth. "That's an obvious enough deduction," she conceded at last, and Dr. Orwell ran her tongue over her own teeth before continuing.

"I think you're struggling with the realization that there's a soupçon of evil in all of us and your beloved volunteer organization has a nasty habit of failing heroically and getting all kinds of people killed, hence the striking out on your own. Yes?" 

Jacquelyn's response to that particular theory came in the form of a stubborn, hard-faced silence; only a meticulous observer who knew her very well indeed would have noticed a slight, rueful flicker in her eyelashes, or a corresponding twitch in her fingertips. 

"We'll leave that one alone for the moment. Either way, I also think the kind of people who hire private investigators to dig up dirt on their colleagues and loved ones haven't exactly been lining up to hire the woman who decided to tell J. Alfred Whiffle's now-ex-third-wife that her husband was having her followed and she ought to talk to him about his trust issues. Hence the pile of bills and final demands on the desk in front of you. Yes?"

Jacquelyn opened her mouth, then closed it again with a sharp snap of her admirable teeth before replying. "I am not about to be subtly conditioned to say… the y-word… every time you run off at the mouth with a rhetorical upward inflection at the end." 

"Of course you're not about to," Dr. Orwell agreed, with perfect sincerity. Even under ideal circumstances, such a process would have required more than one conversation before any reliable conditioning could truly take hold. "But all the same, should I go ahead and take that as one? I can't begin to imagine why you didn't come to some kind of financial arrangement with your cousin before handing over the Duchy, but I _can_ pay you quite competitively, and I may have more work for you in future."

Jacquelyn's silence, this time, was absolute and heavy. She was not and never had been a woman to whom reticence came easily -- a phrase which here means that she was in the habit of expressing her feelings clearly, openly, and occasionally with the aid of brass knuckles, and moreover that she was accustomed to knowing at all times exactly what those feelings were. Dr. Orwell had always adored such bold and single-minded individuals. They were so very easy to derail. 

"Tell me exactly what it is you're trying to retrieve from the lumbermill," Jacquelyn said at last. 

"Items of personal, sentimental, entirely nonlethal value which don't need to be described at this juncture. If you're dying for a client who's just fallen off her first turnip truck, Ms. Scieszka, I'd try the farmers' market, because you're not currently sitting across from her." 

Jacquelyn's face twitched in the direction of an unwilling smile, but she appeared to be trying her hardest to ignore it. "So then why is it so important to retrieve your items now?" 

"Let's just say -- because _now_ , or rather tomorrow at 8:01 AM, is when three months' back rent on your apartment will be wired directly to your landlord from an untraceable numbered account in Northwest South Dakota," Dr. Orwell said calmly. "Plus late fees, laundry room charges, sewer hookup, and cat rent, none of which I'm prepared to believe is actually a real thing, but all of which I _am_ prepared to think of as a down payment. Given the circumstances." 

While Jacquelyn struggled to fully marshal a response, Dr. Orwell leaned forward and selected a turquoise marker from the badly cracked souvenir coffee mug -- FROM THE HINTERLANDS WITH LOVE!!! -- which now held pens on the other woman's desk. In bold, flamboyant strokes she scribbled _CIty 7318_ across the back of a very bluntly worded letter from the local milk delivery service. 

"Whether you subsequently feel inspired to give me a call from a public phone before 9:32 that same morning," she added, "is entirely between you and your conscience."


End file.
